As humans we are created by and for connection. While connection and relationship occur across a broad range of human relationships, I explore the ramifications for marriage.
The tree in the picture for my marriage counseling meeting two is a connection tree. “CONNECTION” is written down the trunk. The roots of connection are two fold: TRUST and INTIMACY.
The TRUST sub-soil or trailing roots involve:
- commitment (a deliberate intention to another person)
- proximity (alignment of your life with another’s)
- engagement (an ongoing, care-taking of the togetherness)
The INTIMACY sub-soil or trailing roots involve:
- identity (understanding that you are loved so you can give love away to another)
- love (the paradigm, perspective, and plausibility through which we view the other)
- conflict (a dance that involves taking turns, lots of energy, and risk. Conflict happens because of the depth of intimacy and for it. To avoid conflict is to avoid intimacy. Disengagement deadens relationships over time.)
With strong roots and rich soil, with the unseen and intangible foundation of trust and intimacy, a couple’s connection tree bears fruit.
Fruit is visible and tangible. Fruit are the habits and behaviors that show on the outside of a couple’s life together.
- What do they do? (make a home, have sex, make conversation, grow their personalities as individuals and a couple, work jobs etc….)
- How do they appear to others? (how do others describe their communication style? what does their house feel like to others?)
- How does being married feel? (what emotions do they experience? what feelings occur most often? what does their silence together say?)
(Here, on the handout, you can draw leaves on the upper branches and write: communication, friendship, parenting, sex, time together, having fun, shared interests, emotions, listening, etc…)
Fruit comes the way fruit does
- With seasons and stages (parenting and child rearing fruit)
- With flavor and appearance (bright and shiny mostly but with bruises and rotten ones in every bushel)
- With show (an image on the outside that reflects, or can betray for a moment, the actual health)
Fruit grows up and out of the roots of trust and intimacy. If there is a problem with the fruit, it’s probably a manifestation of a root issue. Under the surface, the roots feed what shows on the outside. Fruit problems that are simply fruit problems, like a wife’s dislike of a beard he’s growing, will resolve on their own. Fruit problems that reveal root issues, like a partner no longer asking questions about the other’s day, isn’t just a listening issue- it’s an abandonment trust problem.
The invitation is care about the roots and not so much about the fruit. It can be easier to talk about “His personality this…” or “Her feelings that…” or “We can’t communicate right now…” or “What will people think if we…” without tracing the lifeblood of the argument down to its root cause.
When trust is broken because there is a lack of commitment, a disengagement, or a misalignment…hearts hurt. People trail away.
If intimacy is shattered because one person refuses to accept the love and value of their own identity, breaks their love paradigm for seeing the other, or refuses to give love away anymore…marriages hemorrhage.
Broken people enter into bonds of marriage that are not supposed to be broken. It seems impossible and inhumane. However, to enter into a sacred and deliberate, sacrificial and mutually beneficial relationship with another, is actually the most human and Godly thing we can do.
If God designed it, God will sustain it.
Our Jamaican honeymoon in July 2004
When I sat in the bridal room on July 10th, 2004, I shook. I had just realized I didn’t love Drew enough right then to last a whole life together. The love I felt I had to offer that day felt tiny, immature, and naive. Then I remembered and had someone read to me, 1 John 4:16-17 which says, “We know how much God loves us, and we have put our trust in his love.God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and God lives in them. And as we live in God, our love grows more perfect.”
God is the creator and sustainer of relationships and love. If Drew and I could rely on and live in God, God would grow our love for each other to be more perfect. We, 12 years in, do indeed see the progress and God’s faithfulness.
The Bible begins and ends with trees. The last trees are alongside a river flowing down from God’s throne seen in a vision, “On each side of the river grew a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit,with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations. No longer will there be a curse upon anything.” Revelation 22:2-4
The promise and the ever present pull of God is toward these life trees. Trees that bear fruit to provide abundance and medicine for healing. Curses lifted, life restored.
Blessings on the planting of your connection tree Haley and Walker.
For married friends, lets take care, pay attention, tend and nurture, dig up and burn away dead pieces, and bear fruit for the good of the world.
